A previous version of this post said that ViaLight received a €2.4m pre-IPO investment from Auden.

The round was led by Auden AG, which makes it the company’s largest institutional investor, with participation from other unnamed backers.

Launched as a spin-off of DLR, Germany’s national centre for aeronautics and space research, ViaLight Communications commercializes laser-based communications, a key enabling technology for the next generation of telecommunications networks.
The company’s technology makes it possible to securely network satellites and other high-altitude platforms at extremely high data rates. At the time of the company’s original spin-out in 2009, some €50m had already been invested into the basic research for the technology – from DLR itself as well as through European and German government research funding.

Today, ViaLight is no longer a spin-off but a medium company with a a team of 40 employees.